First case of Ebola contracted in U.S. confirmed

The woman was among caregivers for Thomas Eric Duncan, who died on Wednesday at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas

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NEW YORK, October 13. /TASS/. A U.S. health-care worker who treated an Ebola-stricken Liberian man has been diagnosed with the deadly virus.

The woman was among caregivers for Thomas Eric Duncan, who died on Wednesday at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas. A state test finding that she had Ebola was confirmed on Sunday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Atlanta-based CDC said in a statement.

It is the first time someone is known to have contracted Ebola inside U.S. borders, and only the second known case of an infection outside Africa.

Officials are currently assessing all possible contacts the health-care worker may have had from the moment she developed symptoms on Friday. President Barack Obama directed the CDC to conduct its probe of the apparent breach of infection control protocols at the Dallas hospital “as expeditiously as possible,” the White House said.

The Ebola epidemic has killed more than 4,000 people in West Africa and infected more than twice as many this year, the vast majority of them in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone, according to the World Health Organization.